Vermont’s Drug Addiction Problem and Other Fascinating News on the Web

The War on Drugs

Peter Shumlin, the governor of Vermont, dedicated his entire state of state address to one topic: Drug addiction. Like many states, Vermont has seen a significant rise in the number of drug overdoses in recent years, and Shumlin thinks the time has come to take a more realistic approach to the problem. “We have lost the war on drugs. The notion that we can arrest our way out of this problem is yesterday’s theory.”

You Are the Target

During the holiday season, we learned that as many as 40 million Target in-store customers had their credit card data stolen. It turns out that the problem wasn’t nearly that small. And hackers got away with a lot more than credit card information. These days, you don’t have to be an oversharer to put your data at risk. If you’ve swiped your credit card, it’s probably been stolen. If you’ve shopped, your data is likely somewhere where you don’t want it to be.

Weekend Reads

“I wondered, as I waited for my heat to begin, whether the whole thing might be better suited to a gender studies dissertation than to a sports story. But it was too late now. A crowd of spectators had gathered along Talkeetna’s snowy main drag. Men placed bets on the probable winners. Women in colorful wigs and numbered bibs like mine drank from pocket flasks, and children and dogs roamed freely.” SB Nation’s Eva Holland joins in Alaska’s weirdest and wildest competition (which is held for a very good cause): Wilderness Women.

West Virginia, Mountain Trauma

For at least 300,000 residents of West Virginia, the message is clear: Don’t drink the water. Schools and businesses were closed and a state of emergency declared after a chemical spill (that made surrounding areas smell of licorice) impacted the tap water in nine counties. Symptoms that can result from too much consumption of the water include “severe burning in throat, severe eye irritation, non-stop vomiting, trouble breathing or severe skin irritation such as skin blistering.”

Flying Tomato Enterprises

Shaun White has cut his hair. It’s a sign of how quickly time passes. It’s a sign of the mainstreaming of his sport. And it’s a sign that, in many ways, Shaun White has become a corporation — one that extends from the snowboard to the board room. From Elizabeth Weil in the NYT Magazine: The Flying Tomato would rather you not call him that anymore.

Alt Lake City

Some state officials might not be ready to recognize the 900 same-sex marriages that took place in Utah (during the two weeks the unions were legal there), but, as of this morning, the federal government is.

CES Recap

The fine folks at The Wirecutter sifted through all the press releases and product demos in Vegas and came up with this list of tech they’re really looking forward to in 2014: A Realist’s Guide to CES.